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What’s to blame for the lagging U.S life expectancy? A closer look at mid-life ‘deaths of despair’ and retirement-age chronic disease

Head shot of Leah Abrams

Recent Sloan Fellow on Aging and Work Leah Abrams, PhD, is lead author on A Brief Report published in PNAS Demography that explores what could be driving the troubling status of U.S. life expectancy which has been stagnating since 2010. Abrams and her colleagues find chronic disease at the time of retirement to be a bigger factor than the ‘deaths of despair’ (drug overdose, alcohol abuse, and suicide) that have…

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Cross-checking registration mortality rates in Kerala, India with data from MARANAM study confirms that civil registration systems are improving

Head shot of Aashish Gupta

Accurate vital statistics, such as birth and death records, are essential in order to identify mortality risk factors and monitor the performance of health policies. Although mortality registration has historically been incomplete in many low- and middle-income countries, there are signs that it’s improving. Harvard Pop Center Bell Fellow Aashish Gupta, PhD, has co-authored a study that utilizes individual-level registration data from Kerala MARANAM (Mortality and Registration Assessment and Monitoring)…

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In India, women face higher risk of death from COVID-19 than men

Indian woman

The findings of a study published in the Journal of Global Health Science show that women In India , particularly in certain age groups, do not have the biological advantage over men of fighting off COVID-19. The authors suggest that social determinants of health, such as access to healthcare, and health and nutritional status, could be undermining the female advantage witnessed in many other countries. Authors on the study include…

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Novel study reveals an unequal surge in COVID-19 mortality rates in Massachusetts by poverty level, race and crowded housing

death rate differences by crowded housing

A Harvard Pop Center working paper reveals the findings of an analysis of State-provided public health data by Harvard T. H. Chan School researchers Jarvis Chen, Pamela Waterman, and Nancy Krieger. The Boston Globe obtained the data and shared it with the researchers in order to generate this novel analysis. Read more in The Boston Globe, and in this Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health news item.   Graphic…

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